Feminist Friday

The Mindy Project just came back on the air and with it we’ve got the wonderful Mindy Kaling hitting the media circuit. She gets real about body image and the media in this interview, telling Jimmy Kimmel that it’s not “courageous” of her to wear a crop top.

An anonymous Harvard student recently published a heart wrenching Op-Ed about her experience of sexual assault at the university.

There had to be other options for me out there, I thought. I got the school to issue a no-contact order against my assailant. I convinced myself that if I pushed hard enough, if I made enough noise, someone somewhere would hear me, stand up, do something. But no one really did. Confidentiality rules prevent me from revealing most of what was—or was not—done to respond to my report. Ironically, if I were to reveal this information, I could risk getting disciplined. What I can say, however, is that in my opinion, the school’s limited response amounted to the equivalent of a slap on the hand for my assailant. After unsuccessfully suggesting a number of interventions that could have helped me better live with my situation, I eventually got the persistent impression that my House staff believed I was fussing over nothing.

Hannibal actress Hettienne Park recently published a beautiful response to fans who have called (spoiler alert) the death of her character, Beverly Katz, racist and sexist.

When you feel marginalized by the world at large, there’s great comfort and empowerment in seeing someone you can identify with on the screen who isn’t subject to clichés or stereotypes. When that gets taken away, you can feel like you’ve been f***ed over once again. And unless you’ve ever been hurt merely due to the color of your skin, what’s between your legs, or who sleeps next to you at night, you probably don’t understand that kind of pain. And anger is usually our first defense against pain.

Find an awesome young feminist and tell her to apply to join the SPARK Action Squad! SPARK is an girl fueled activist group focused on ending the sexualization of women in the media. Our action squad is a group of awesome allies who help SPARK with campaigns and develop their own actions.

One of my all time favorite bloggers Arabelle Sicardi wrote a piece for Teen Vogue for teen girls who have crushes on other girls. The fact that this was published in a widely read magazine is Kind of A Big Deal.